1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to spectacles. More specifically, the present invention relates to ray screening visors for spectacle lenses.
2. Description of the Prior Art
For many years people have been seeking more effective ways of preventing sun or other types of light from interfering with their vision when wearing spectacles. In general, there have been two different approaches to blocking or shading light from interfering with a person's vision when wearing a pair of spectacles. In one approach, people have modified spectacle frames to block or shade light from entering the spectacle lenses by presenting opaque barriers between the spectacle lenses and undesirable light entering the lenses. The following previously issued United States Patents disclose several of these devices.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,005,214 issued to Koethe discloses an elongated, generally strip-like shade visor device that is removably attachable to the front frame section of a pair of eyeglasses to shade the wearer's eyes from overhead glare.
U.S. Patent No. 5,258,786 issued to Penrod discloses a visor apparatus for attachment to a pair of eyeglasses. The apparatus has tow main parts, including a clip means which attaches to a pair of eyeglasses and a visor portion which is pivotally attached to the clip means.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,025 issued to Wang discloses a sunshade and sunglasses which may be interchageably detachably attached to vision correcting eye glasses is provided. The attachment is made by way of flexigrip-catch pairs. A pair of flexigrips are integrally formed on the top of an eyeglass frame for correcting lenses and are adapted for being received by a first pair of catches that are integrally formed on the top of a frame of a pair of sunglasses which has no temples, or a second pair of catches fixedly positioned underneath a sunshade.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,619,287 issued to Tseng discloses a pair of eyeglasses with a sunshade having a sunshade releasably combined with a frame and a plate glass also collapsibly combined with the frame, the sunshade and the plate glass being replaceable to be combined with the frame according to the taste of a user.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,818,565 issued to Wang discloses an eyeglass structure includes an eyeglass frame defining two rims each receiving and holding therein a lens. Each of the rims has a recessed notch defined by two opposite side walls spaced from each other with a pivot pin extending from one of the side walls to substantially midway of the spacing between the side walls. A sunshade has two projections, each having a through hole through which each of the pivot pins extends so as to allow the sunshade to be substantially normal to the lenses to block sun light coming from above the eyeglass structure and a stowed position wherein the sunshade is adjacent to and substantially cover the lenses to protect and block light coming from the front side from incidence onto the lenses.
These visor type devices are generally effective but typically require spectacle frames having upper retaining structure to be employed. Therefor, there is a need for an effective way to block or shade undesirable light from interacting with a person's eyes when the person is wearing a pair of spectacles without an upper retaining frame structure.
As a second approach, people have filtered light entering spectacle lenses to block or shade the light so that the light interacting with the eye does not interfere with comfortable viewing through the spectacle lenses. The following previously issued United States Patents are representative of this approach.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,080,688 issued to Cohen discloses a lens that reduces eye strain and fatigue due to glare. The lens includes a light transmitting plastic body having a convex shaped outer surface for deflecting stray angular radiation and a body provide, in combination with, an ultraviolet absorber to block the transmission of ultraviolet radiation, a colored dye to diminish the intensity of any fluorescent light incident upon the lens and to diminish the transmission of either or both green color radiation or yellow color radiation through the lens and a grey dye to reduce the transmission of incident light.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,991,072 issued to Solyntjes discloses a lens film used to filter visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light. The lens film has one or more metallized layers stacked together. Each metallized layer has a substrate with a metal coating covering one face of the substrate.
This approach to blocking or shading light from interfering with comfortable viewing through spectacle lenses is also generally effective is certain situations. However, there are applications where filtering light from interacting with the spectacle wearer's eyes is not acceptable. Therefore, there is a need for a way to block or shade undesirable light from interacting with a person's eyes when filtering the lenses of a pair of spectacles without an upper retaining frame structure is not acceptable.